Monday, 28 January 2013

Nightmare on Elm Street meets Dirty Harry

It
was one of those evenings. On the first board we bid a small slam missing a
side ace and five trumps including the king; the opponents did not cash their
ace at trick one, and so, courtesy of a 3-3 break in another side suit, this
contract rolled home. Then on the second board we pushed our opponents into a
five diamond contract, doubled and redoubled to boot and then failed to find
the killing opening lead (king from king
doubleton). Inexplicably declarer failed to take a finesse, and the contract
went off. My heart was still pumping when this hand came up:

Dealer:
North

Vul : None

West

North

East

South

Pass

Pass

2♣ (1)

Pass

2♦(2)

Pass

3♣

Pass

3NT
(3)

Pass

4♠

Pass

5♠

Pass

6♠
(4)

Pass

Pass

Pass

Forcing to game

Waiting

Natural, showing scattered values

South’s final bid was conservative. Envisaging
four spades to the ace in partner’s hand, he could almost count 13 tricks on a
3-2 trump split.

West led the heart knave, covered by the queen, East’s king and
won by declarer’s ace.

Two possible lines of play suggest themselves:

1.Cash the ♠K and ♦A,
then follow with ♠Q,
overtaken by dummy’s ace and take a diamond ruff with ♠J. Play your remaining small
spade to dummy’s 109, drawing any outstanding trumps in opponents’ hands. Finally,
play clubs from top. If clubs break 3-2, you will make thirteen tricks. If
clubs do not break, you will lose the fourth round of clubs with no way back to
your hand. Opponents will cash their remaining diamonds and heart. Result:
contract either makes with an overtrick or two off.

2.Cash ♠K and ♠Q,
follow with ♣AK. If
clubs and spades are 3-2, simply draw the last trump and cash winners, ruffing
a heart in dummy at the end for your thirteenth trick. If clubs are 3-2 but
spades are 4-1, you no longer have the entries to do the dummy reversal.You can draw the opposing trumps ending in
hand and you give up a heart at the end. If clubs break 4-1 but the hand with the
singleton club is out of trumps, you can ruff a club and play dummy’s other top
spade. Then come back to hand with ♦A
to draw the remaining trump with ♠J (if necessary) and again you play your remaining
winners, conceding a heart at the end. Result: contract either makes with an
over trick, makes exactly or goes one off.

That’s
a lot of options and you also need to consider your possible matchpoint score relative
to those pairs in 6NT and the few in 7♠. They will be making
exactly if clubs are 3-2 (barring 5-0 spade breaks) and going off (maybe three
off in 6NT) otherwise.

Method 1

Method 2

Clubs 3-2 & Spades 3-2

Beat 6NT

Beat 6NT

Clubs 3-2 & Spades 4-1

Beat Method 2, 6NT

-

Clubs 4-1 & Spades 3-2

Beat 7S, 6NT

Beat Method 1, 6NT, 7S

So in summary, Method 1 gains
over Method 2 in all the 3-2 club breaks when spades break 4-1, (68% of 28%)
but loses in all the 4-1 club breaks (28%). That said, half the time the spades
are 4-1, you might want to discount the possibility that clubs are 4-1 as well,
since this would give one player eleven red cards – probably more than enough
to have stirred some opposition activity during the auction.

Put it the other way around, Method
2 gains in all the 4-1 club breaks - but if you follow this line, you will be
beaten by Method 1 (as well as 6NT and 7♠) in 28% of the 3-2
club breaks. In the other 68% of the 3-2 breaks, both methods score the same 13
tricks and beat 6NT but not 7♠.

In pure technical terms, there
may be a slight bias in favour of one method over the other. There is however
one final factor – what does it do for partnership confidence if you go down in
6♠
when it was makeable, and have to explain to partner that you were chasing an
overtrick? You feed your negative score into the Bridgepad only to find that
the overtrick was unnecessary to beat those pairs who were in 4♠
or 6♣!

Maybe for all this analysis,
the answer is that if you need a lift to your score, you should adopt Method 1.
If you need to avoid bad scores, you should play Method 2. Or as Harry
Callaghan almost said: Before you play a
card, you’ve got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky? Well, do you?

2 comments:

Can you not get the best of both worlds? Start with SK, DA, SQ overtaken, like line 1, but if trumps are breaking then there's no need to ruff the diamond immediately - you can draw the last trump and play on clubs. Whereas if trumps are 4-1 you can continue as per line 1.